There have been myriad plans to restore Liberty floated around in the Freedom Forces (FREEFOR) and Patriot communities. They’ve ranged from making war on police officers to more traditional resistance operations against countervalue targets, to passive resistance and civil disobedience, and simply voting our way out. I think some of these plans have some merit… some have more than others, while at least two have no merit. I’ve never liked the idea of shooting police officers ‘just to get our point across’ and I think it’s a dumb idea. A similarly dumb idea is that we can just vote in a new, better president to fix everything. I don’t mean any personal offense to anyone who supports these plans; I just wish that you would think through the process of what they entail, the likelihood of success, and the end result if you fail. There are, of course, several striking negative second- and third-order effects that are detrimental to what you’re actually trying to accomplish. I’ve covered those in detail in previous posts.
Understand: I’m a pragmatist. I favor practical plans over outlandish and low-probability-of-success plans. And since there are relatively few of us Patriots willing to pursue a future to the ends of our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor, and since we will only have one chance to get it right the first time, we owe it to ourselves to move out with a purpose with a plan that can actually get us what we want. If we look across the spectrum of civil conflicts across the centuries, there a lot that not only failed in succeeding, but that actually made life worse. In other words, the exact opposite of what these folks set out to do. I’m reminded of the Roman Emperor Caligula, who by all accounts was one of the most brutal, demented, and evil rulers in the history of the earth. He was assassinated by a few body guards who wanted the Roman Senate to restore the Republic. But what did the Roman people do upon hearing of Caligula’s death? They stormed the Senate building and insisted that Claudius be made emperor. (Claudius’ life had been spared by the Praetorian Guard during the coup.) Claudius purchased the support of the Praetorian Guard, which thus entrenched him as emperor, completely negating the efforts of the Senatorial conspiracy to restore the Republic. And Claudius selected Nero as his heir, who infamously fiddled as Rome burned. This is just one among many such historical realities.
